Begins at 1 p.m. with the Stubby Shillelaghs playing Iron Maiden and ends at 10 p.m. after Peter, Paul and Gary play the “16 Candles” soundtrack. It all takes place at Lincoln Park in downtown Greeley and is $5 for adults and free for kids 12 and under. The lineup includes bands covering, and sometimes pretending to be, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, the Eagles, Black Sabbath, Michael Jackson and others.

There is also a free kickoff concert from 6-9 p.m. Friday in downtown Greeley for the final Friday Fest, which includes the Go Cup District from 5-10 p.m. on the 9th Street Plaza. Bands will cover Waylon Jennings (6-6:45 p.m.), Cat Stevens (7-7:45 p.m.) and Heart (8-9 p.m.).

Related Media

Dave Klein greets you at the front door with a Reds baseball game in the background and two Corgis only a touch bigger than guinea pigs bouncing at your feet. In the corner rests a small zoo of the Corgis’ stuffed animals. Incense burns in the background.

All of it isn’t very metal, at all, even if one of the Corgis, the puppy, has a skull collar. Garth and Wayne would not be impressed, not at first, anyway, until Klein invites you into his “metal room.”

The room contains walls of CDs — yes walls, plural — mostly alphabetized, and DVDs and some signed photos of a few choice bands. There are trinkets. There’s even a couch and some chairs, so you can sit and soak in the room, as if it were a sauna for loud music.

“I don’t have a boat, and I don’t go skiing,” said Klein of Greeley. “Metal is my hobby.”

So much so that, for fun, he used to drum for Open Fire, a metal cover band and one of the better local groups in Greeley before it disbanded more than a year ago. Klein hasn’t played much since then. But he’s back, thanks to an unlikely connection with another favorite local group, The Stubby Shillelaghs.

Klein will provide a little extra muscle to the Stubbys, a folk band that plays most Tuesday nights at Patrick’s and other gigs as well, and that’s because the folk band is covering Iron Maiden for the annual My Favorite Bands festival on Saturday.

“Blisters and all,” Klein said.

Folk and metal mix better than you think. Bands such as Eluveitie play the so-called “folk metal” well without doing a disservice to either genre. But still, it probably surprised Damon Smith, My Favorite Bands’ organizer, when he called Andy Mithun of the Stubbys and asked him what band they would like to cover, and Mithun instantly answered Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden, a group that influenced both the harder-edged metal bands today and the power metal bands of the 80s, seems like the opposite of what the Stubbys play. But Andy has a former life. He was a metal singer for many years, and they’re also bringing in members from the local metal band Vacant Throne. The Stubbys, too, occasionally play a metal song during regular Tuesday evening gigs.

“Metal fans are a devoted bunch, and Iron Maiden is almost universal,” Mithun said. “Everyone who likes metal either likes them or respects them.”

Granted, the Stubbys are making some adjustments to the music. The band’s playing many numbers acoustically. Eric Fisher plays the guitar solos on his fiddle, and Ryan Knaub plays Steve Harris’ bass lines (some of the toughest in rock) on a stand-up in some songs.

The band may play folk, but many know the numbers well enough that sheet music wasn’t required.

“I learned all my songs by ear,” said Klein, who became an Iron Maiden fan after buying “Killers,” the band’s second album, because he liked the album cover art. “Plus I’ve listened to Iron Maiden a hundred thousand times.”

Part of the fun of the My Favorite Bands festival, now in its fifth year, is those odd pairings, said Damon Smith, organizer. Smith doesn’t care what band musicians cover, as he tends to select his lineup with the help of a committee based on their ability.

“It almost always seems to work out that way,” Smith said of the odd pairings. “It’s usually one person in a band who sort of leads the charge, and as long as I know that person, you can play whatever.”

Here’s another odd coupling: A soul band from Fort Collins with four female vocalists, on lead and backup, playing Black Sabbath. Yep, another band credited with influencing most metal bands that play today, as well as launching the career of Ozzy Osbourne. Mama Lenny and the Remedy learned the songs last year for a Halloween show after the band voted to play songs from Black Sabbath instead of Michael Jackson.

“I think it was because we wanted it to be totally unexpected,” said Laniece Schleicher, lead vocalist.

Schleicher would like to sound like Ozzy, but she really can’t sing like him, she said. She will try a British accent. The band won’t try to play Black Sabbath in a soul style, she said.